Daffodil Time
by LoyaulteMeLie
Summary: Mary Reed has regrets. A prequel to 'Omen'.


**Disclaimer: Star Trek (plus all its intellectual property) is owned by Paramount. No infringement intended.**

**Warning: Marital infidelity**

**Beta'd by VesperRegina, to whom all due thanks!**

* * *

After all these years.

She almost dropped the coffee cup when she saw him walk in.

He'd hardly changed at all. Still the same slender build, the same composed, almost aloof expression. His dark hair was a little shorter than it used to be. He still drank his tea black. No sugar either.

She watched him considering the selection of sandwiches. He glanced at the dessert cabinet, but saw pineapple tarts and grimaced. All around her the coffee bar was a buzz of irrelevant sound; the background of Christmas carols made soulless by repetition faded into non-existence. Her universe had narrowed down to a man she hadn't seen for almost seven years.

Perhaps the intensity of her gaze got through to him somehow. As he paused, looking around for a vacant table, his eyes met hers. He'd always had superb self-control, but nevertheless she saw the way his gaze changed.

For a moment she thought he'd put the cup down and leave without a word. She didn't deserve any better; she wouldn't have blamed him if he had. But after a slight hesitation, he came over to her table. "Is this seat free?"

So much behind those four words. His eyes were still the colour of a stormy sea.

"Please." She heard the quaver in her voice.

He sat down. No sandwich. Perhaps he'd lost his appetite. Her own half-eaten scone lay forgotten on the plate in front of her.

He drank half of his cup of tea without speaking again, while the silence lay between them like a wilderness filled with thorns.

"Are you happy?" He asked it at last, in a perfectly level voice.

She opened her mouth to answer in the affirmative. Suddenly, to her horror, the tears pricked at the back of her eyes. She picked up her napkin and pressed it to her mouth to cover the shameful trembling. The shake of her head was infinitesimal, but he saw it.

"Oh, Mary." The long, spatulate fingers tightened on the teacup, but he made no other movement.

"I know. I know." They both knew. It was all her fault.

They'd been in love, seven years ago. Secretly, shamefully in love.

And she was engaged to the son of her father's commanding officer in the Royal Navy. An engagement that had happened without her ever having understood quite how it had happened. She'd met Stuart Reed for the first time at one of the inevitable officers' social functions and been aware of his immediate interest. One or two dates had followed; she hadn't taken them that seriously. Then she discovered that, following the sort of old-fashioned manners still prevalent in their social circle even in this day and age, he'd asked her father's permission to propose to her. In actual terms, this meant that her life would have become utterly unbearable if she'd refused. It was a _brilliant_ match. Everyone said that Stuart would have his own ship within the next ten years. And she'd been reared from childhood to be a dutiful, biddable girl. She couldn't bear quarrels and raised voices. As for what she'd have got if she'd said 'no'...

So she hadn't.

And then she fell in love. With this man, who had no Connections, no Traditions, and no Expectations. No family to speak of. Just something ... special.

One spring, they'd had. One spring, while Stuart was away on deployment in the Indian Ocean and the expensive engagement ring on her finger could be forgotten.

They'd never made love. In hindsight she'd come to regret that bitterly, but she'd had a sheltered, religious upbringing and at the time a few stolen, passionate kisses had seemed bad enough, breathing hellfire down her neck. Listening, with a heart palpitating in her breast, to his pleas that she find from somewhere the courage to tell her family how she truly felt, to brave Stuart's wrath, to throw common sense to the winds and count the world well lost for love. He'd offered to come with her, to take the brunt of whatever came, to protect her from everything.

Any woman who'd been less of a coward would have accepted.

He hadn't believed she could be such a weakling. Right up until the last minute. Right up until the church doors, when her last sight of him had been a solitary figure walking away from the thrown rice and confetti.

Ever since then, nothing. She was a married woman. Mrs Mary Reed. Wife of Commander Reed, complete with his own ship and a burning desire for a son which so far she'd failed to provide. Six miscarriages bore testimony to her efforts to oblige him. In addition to being shy, gauche, and not endowed with over-much intelligence, she was apparently incapable of carrying a healthy child to term. This had not improved an already not particularly affectionate marital relationship. But there again, this was her fault. Every failing carries its own punishment. And as she stared into the storm-grey eyes, it seemed to her that hers was more than she could bear.

The daffodils had been blowing, yellow and gay and carefree, that first day they'd walked in the park together. A brisk March wind had buffeted the umbrella. A scatter of raindrops from a fleeting shower had dimpled the lake's rippled surface where half a dozen ducklings had bobbed in a flotilla after their mother.

Half a dozen ducklings. Half a dozen miscarriages. Just over half a dozen years of being married to man she'd slowly come to realise regarded her as a brood mare for the production of Navy officers and not much else. He was due home this evening, and doubtless the production line would swing into action again in short order.

Her fingers reached out to his across the table. Stopped halfway. She was still a coward at heart.

_"Leave him."_ The voice was low and intense. "I've got my own place. I live on my own, I never... I won't expect anything from you, nothing like that. Just leave him."

The scandal. The shouting. The shame. "I can't."

He took a sip of his tea and looked out of the window. In the park opposite the ducks would be sitting disconsolately on the ice. The trees were stripped and stark against the clouds. Sleet was forecast. Christmas was only a few days away; she'd come to do her last minute shopping, for a celebration for which she had no heart. "Then just come for a walk with me." A faint smile. "I've got my umbrella."

So he had, and it was the same one: black and white, with a quaintly carved handle of polished wood that two hands fitted onto snugly.

The cups were left on the table. So was the uneaten half of the scone. An overworked waitress made a faint moue of disgust at the wastefulness of folk who didn't finish what they'd paid for.

* * *

"You've got the little boy you always wanted."

* * *

He met her at the Registry Office. The sun came out and glanced across the stormy sea as he turned back the soft wool and stared at the little boy, sleeping peacefully in his mother's arms.

They'd argued everything out. Even now she wouldn't leave that cruel, conceited bastard; wouldn't shatter his illusions. _For better or worse. _Was it fear of the consequences? Terror of hellfire? The determination to honour at least one of her marriage vows? He'd never know. "Has he told you what to call him?"

"He was recalled yesterday. Some Admiralty hoo-ha. But he left me a list." Her voice was flat and bitter. "He doesn't care that much which I pick."

His rare smile was gentle and wry. "Let me guess. Good old English names, one and all."

"Something like that." She rested her head on his shoulder for a moment before raising it to show him a look of such sparkling defiance that his heart almost stopped. "I'm going to give him yours."

He swallowed. It took him a moment to get back control. "You'd do that?"

"Yes."

"And ... I don't suppose that's one of the ones on the list."

"No."

"And you don't think there'll be ... I couldn't bear it."

She grinned. It took years off her. "I'll say I named him after my uncle. He won't know any different."

"I take it you did _have_ an Uncle Malcolm."

"Yes. Funnily enough, you even look a bit like him. Mother said last night that this young man here looked as though he was going to favour our side rather than Stuart's." Laughter shimmered in her voice. "I'm not sure whether she thought that was a good thing; she always held Uncle Mal up as a Horrid Example. He drank himself to death. Died a few years ago."

"Mighty convenient of him."

"Probably the first time in his life he did something the family approved of."

"So Commander High-and-Mighty Reed's going to come home and find his son's been named after the black sheep of _your_ family." He grinned too, albeit a little ruefully. "Mary, you just keep on surprising me."

A shrug. "It'll be a nine-day grievance. And at least this little Reed won't be a heartless prig." She hugged the baby, who slept on, unawares. "Will I see you again?"

"I'll always be here if you need me." He put out a finger and stroked his son's cheek. "And if _he_ does. That goes without saying." He did not know that a rare complication after a routine operation in too short a time from now would mean he never saw the daffodils dance again after his son's first birthday. And that his going would be the end of that spark of life in the woman whom he still loved passionately, even after all this time, even after she'd broken his heart by marrying someone else.

He lifted his eyes with some difficulty from the sleeping infant and met her gaze. "Will you tell him? One day? That I'm…."

"Probably not," she sighed. "I think that would make life just too ... complicated for him."

"Well ... may I see him? Just sometimes?" He hadn't meant to ask, but he couldn't stop himself. He didn't even know whether it would be a good thing or a bad; he only knew that he dreaded from the bottom of his heart the thought of his son in the tender loving care of the man he'd seen for the first and last time at that church door, the smug and possessive smile on his face failing utterly to conceal the ill-nature beneath it. Mary was too, of course, but she'd made her own decisions and could escape if she chose. The tininess and vulnerability of the little baby nestling in the wool aroused all his protective instincts. Baby Malcolm had no choice and no escape.

"I'm sure we could arrange something. We could meet every year ... come to the park to look at the daffodils." She managed a flying, gallant smile as she suggested it, a scrap of illicit romance salvaged from the ruins of her dreams.

It was all he could do not to cry and curse as he realised that. "You won't change your mind?" He would never ask her again. But then he'd never take 'no' for a final answer.

She knew both of those things. "No."

The registrar's assistant called at that moment. "Mrs Reed? If you're ready..."

She stood up, transferring the baby carefully on to her other arm. "I'll see you next daffodil time."

"I'll be waiting." He leaned down and kissed his son gently on the forehead. The skin was incredibly soft. He smelled of baby powder and clean linen. At the touch the long lashes stirred, revealing still-unfocussed eyes that would one day be the grey of a stormy sea. The vaguely groping fingers found his chin, and explored it tentatively. "And I predict you'll be a credit to whatever ship you serve in, young man." He wanted to say more, but the unsayable words were choking him.

He couldn't kiss her. It was a tightly knit community and this was a public place. Who knew who might be looking? Word gets around.

A long look had to say everything. And it pretty well did.

He walked to the door to the outside world. She walked to the door to the registrar's inner sanctum.

Outside the September sunshine was slanting down between the trees and gilding the wet pavement. Its reflection in the windows of a distant office block on the other side of the park made it look as though the building was on fire. Around the boles of the trees the long grass drooped, sparkling with rain; there was nothing there now but the buds of a few early autumn crocuses.

But the daffodils _would _come back.

**The End.**

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**All reviews and comments received with gratitude!**


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